Catching Fireflies (38 page)

Laura sat on the edge of an antique Queen Anne sofa chosen to reflect status, rather than for comfort.

“I’m so sorry you think that’s the kind of person I am, that I would come here to gloat about what has been a tragedy for so many young people in this town,” she said.

“Then why are you here?”

“To see how you and Annabelle are coping with all this. No matter how it seems to you, I know how much you love your daughter and how devastating all of this has been to your plans for her future.”

Rather than responding to the olive branch Laura was attempting to hold out, Mariah’s gaze narrowed. “Annabelle’s future is not over, not by a long shot, despite your best efforts to destroy her.”

Laura sighed. “I never wanted to destroy anyone, Mariah. I wanted her to wake up and realize that what she was doing to Misty was wrong. I wanted you to see that young people need guidance, not a free pass. Everyone in Serenity has always shared your dreams for Annabelle. She’s amazingly talented. But that doesn’t mean she’s better than everyone else or that her actions don’t need to have consequences. I honestly hope she’s going to be a better person because of what’s happened.”

“Really?” Mariah said scathingly. “That’s what you hope?”

“It is,” Laura said, holding her gaze with an unblinking gaze of her own.

Suddenly Mariah seemed to crumble before her eyes. She buried her face in her hands. “I had so many dreams for her, so many hopes,” she whispered tearfully. “I know everyone thought I was pushing her, making her do this to make up for my own dreams getting shoved aside when I got pregnant, but it wasn’t about that at all.”

“Tell me,” Laura said, honestly wanting to understand.

“From the day Annabelle first stood in church and sang a solo, I knew she had something special. She was better than I’d ever dreamed of being. We all heard it, and she was only eight years old. From that moment, I’ve devoted myself to making sure she had everything she needed. I had no idea it could go so terribly wrong.”

Laura regarded her with compassion. “Few parents completely understand how fine the line is between supporting and loving their children unconditionally and giving them carte blanche to do whatever they want to do. I may not be a parent, but I struggle with discipline every single day in my classroom. I need my students to follow the rules, but I also want them to understand why those rules matter, to get that I’m not just being vindictive or arbitrary.”

Mariah nodded, her expression filled with sorrow and regret. “I don’t talk about this ever, because there’s no point, but maybe it will help you to understand just a little.” She drew in a deep breath, then said, “My father was an incredibly tough disciplinarian, at least that’s how he saw his actions. He used a belt to keep us kids in line.”

Laura winced as she heard the pain in Mariah’s voice.

“He said it was because he loved us,” Mariah said wryly, “but it was hard to believe that with welts on our backsides more often than not. I vowed I’d never be like that. I wanted Annabelle never to doubt for a single second that I loved her more than my own life.”

“You’ve proven that,” Laura assured her. “And you’re not the first parent to go to an opposite extreme from the way they were parented.”

“But I think it’s clear that leniency wasn’t the answer, either. You should hear the conversations Annabelle’s father and I have been having about that these past couple of weeks. He’d been warning me for a long time I was too easy on her, but I couldn’t see it.”

“Then perhaps this has been a wake-up call that will turn things around for all of you,” Laura said. “Maybe you could focus on being grateful that it came in time and before any real lasting harm came to Misty or, for that matter, to Annabelle.”

Mariah didn’t look entirely convinced, but at least the hostility that had been in the air when Laura arrived was gone.

“Thank you for coming by,” she said at last. “It took real courage and grace to do that. I’m not sure I’d have done the same.”

Laura smiled. “Who knows? You might have surprised yourself.”

At the door, she held out her hand, waited perhaps a beat too long until Mariah took it. “Happy Thanksgiving, Mariah.”

“Happy Thanksgiving to you, too,” Mariah said. There was even a hint of real sincerity behind the words.

As Laura walked away, relief washed over her. This sad chapter, she hoped, was finally closed.

* * *

Thanksgiving morning in South Carolina didn’t always have the cool, crisp weather that Laura had grown up with in Iowa, but the skies were blue and the air balmy. She returned home from a church service and coffee hour to find J.C. pacing impatiently in front of her house.

“Where have you been?” he asked.

“Where do a lot of people usually go on Thanksgiving morning?” she retorted.

He winced. “Church. Of course.”

“Is there a reason you’re here so early? I thought you weren’t picking me up to go to Sullivan’s until two o’clock.”

“There’s something I wanted to talk to you about before that,” he said, following her inside, where he continued to pace.

Laura regarded him with curiosity. “Is something wrong? You seem particularly agitated this morning.”

“I need coffee,” he said. “Do you have any coffee?”

“I can make some.”

He waved off the offer. “No, don’t bother. I’ll have water.”

He charged off to the kitchen. Laura let him go. He obviously needed time to compose himself, though she couldn’t imagine why.

When he came back into the living room, he sat down next to her on the sofa, then popped right back up.

“You and I,” he began, then stopped.

Laura had seen plenty of nervous kids in her classroom trying to work up the courage to do an oral report. It was usually best to nudge them along.

“Yes,” she said. “You and I…”

He shook his head as if she’d snapped him back from some faraway place. “I never thought I’d be doing this again,” he said, making absolutely no sense.

“Doing what?”

He looked her in the eyes, his expression charmingly bewildered. “Proposing.”

Laura couldn’t seem to keep her jaw from dropping. “
That’s
what you’re doing?”

He nodded. “Making a real mess of it so far, huh? You can’t even tell what I’m up to. How pitiful is that?”

Even though her heart was pounding and she was trying valiantly to keep from shouting yes, she managed to look him in the eye. “Is that what you really want to do, to propose?”

He nodded. “I never expected this. You, me. Falling in love.” He groaned. “I am so sorry. This is such a disaster. I should probably wait, start over another time. Take you out for a romantic dinner or something.” He frowned. “We’ve never even had a romantic dinner, not really. Why would you want to marry a man who hasn’t even courted you properly?” He raked his hand through his hair, leaving it charmingly rumpled. “What is wrong with me?”

She smiled. Beamed, in fact. “You’re doing just fine,” she assured him. “And, believe me, there is nothing wrong with you. I’ve tried to find something, just so I could protect my heart in case this went nowhere.” She shrugged. “But, sorry, J.C., no flaws. I haven’t found a one.”

“I could list them, you know, in the interest of fair disclosure and all that.”

She barely managed to contain a chuckle. “Or I could make it easy on you and just say yes.”

He blinked at that, took a step back, then came closer, his gaze narrowed. “Did you just say yes?”

“I did, unless you’ve changed your mind and decided not to ask, after all. You seem to be trying really hard to talk yourself out of it.”

“But I wanted to do the whole romantic, down-on-one-knee thing,” he protested.

She stood up and moved into his arms. “This was better. This was you being sweet and sincere and scared to death. Seems to me any sane person committing to forever ought to be scared to death.”

“But you did it without even a blink of the eye,” he noted.

“Because I’ve wanted this since the first day I walked into your office and you warned me off,” she said. “Just shows how perverse I am. I’ve always been drawn to the unobtainable. There was a time when that didn’t work out so well, but this time?” She smiled at him. “This time I think it’s going to turn out exactly right.”

He picked her up and spun her around until she was dizzy. “I just knew today was going to be the luckiest day of my life,” he said. “Now all we have to do is undergo a cross-examination by half the town. They’re all going to have something to say about this, you know. Maybe we should skip Thanksgiving dinner and celebrate right here, by ourselves.”

“Not a chance.” She looked into his eyes. “Anybody in that crowd who hates your guts or knows any deep, dark secrets?”

“Absolutely not,” he said, frowning.

“Ditto with me,” she told him. “I think we’re good to go.”

“Have I mentioned that I love you, Laura Reed?”

“No need,” she told him. “It’s been in every word you’ve said and everything you’ve done for weeks now. It just took you a while to figure that out.”

He laughed. “Having you around to read my mind is definitely going to make my life a whole lot easier.”

“And having you in my life is going to make me happier than I ever expected to be. I think that makes us a pretty good team.”

He held her gaze, then said quietly, “We’re going to be unbeatable.” His expression sober, he added, “One more thing.”

“What’s that?”

“You’ve never said that you’d like to find your child, but I think I know you well enough to understand that not knowing where she is has been eating away at you. If you want to make an effort to find her, to make her a part of our lives in whatever way she’d like to be, that’s okay with me. I’ll do whatever I can to help you.”

Laura blinked back tears at his words. He’d just touched on so many raw emotions. “I don’t know, J.C. Maybe she won’t want to know me,” she said voicing her greatest fear.

“You won’t know until you’ve tried to reach out. And what I know with absolute certainty is that she’d be the luckiest girl in the world to discover that she has a biological mom who was brave enough to give her up.”

So many times over the years Laura had thought of trying to find her child, but she’d thought it would be selfish. And maybe she’d been just a little bit afraid of what she’d find—a young woman who wanted no part of the person who’d given birth to her, then given her away. Perhaps now, with J.C.’s love and support, she could risk that.

“Thank you,” she said softly.

He tucked a finger under her chin and looked deep into her eyes. “You never have to thank me for loving you and wanting to do anything and everything that will make you happy. From here on out, there’s nothing in my life that will matter more.”

She smiled at that. “You know what I’m going to be most grateful for today?”

“What?”

“That all the other single women in this town somehow missed what a catch you are or were scared off by your warnings to stay away.”

J.C. chuckled. “You weren’t scared off, were you? Not even a little bit.”

“I had a few uneasy moments,” she admitted. “But I think I knew from the very first day that you were going to be worth every risk I took. Turns out I was right.”

“I’m glad you think so,” he said, then cut off the conversation with a kiss that took her breath away.

“Oh, yeah,” she murmured, when she could speak again. “I was really, really right!”

* * * * *

Look for
WHERE AZALEAS BLOOM
by Sherryl Woods,
the next
SWEET MAGNOLIAS
story,
on sale from Harlequin MIRA in September
at your favorite retail outlet.

Keep reading for an excerpt of
Midnight Promises
by Sherryl Woods!

Questions for Discussion

1. Laura Reed feels passionately about being a good role model and mentor for her students because she once had a teacher who played that critical role in her life. Have you ever had a mentor or friend whose advice and support made all the difference for you in a difficult situation? Explain what happened.
2. If you’re a parent, how attuned are you to your child’s behavior and signs of possible bullying? Do you believe bullying is ever innocent, acceptable or just part of growing up?
3. What is your local school’s policy on bullying? Is there not only a policy, but an active program to prevent bullying? If not, should there be?
4. Has your community experienced a tragedy related to bullying? What actions were taken as a result? Should more have been done?
5. If a teacher or neighborhood parent reports that your child has bullied another child, what is your first reaction? Like Mariah, do you instinctively defend your child, or do you keep an open mind?
6. What is the parent’s responsibility in preventing bullying? Do you pay close attention to what your children are doing online? Do you feel children, especially teens, have a right to privacy, or is it more important to monitor what’s going on in their lives? How do you balance those things?
7. In the story, J.C. has been through a lot. Which incident do you think did the most to shape the man he is today—losing his brother, or his wife’s betrayal? Has there ever been a defining moment in your life that shaped who you are?
8. For a time, Misty’s mother is so lost in the pain of her divorce that she stops paying close attention to the needs of her children. Have you ever been through such a difficult time that nothing seems to matter beyond your own pain? What were the circumstances and how did you overcome that?
9. Mariah Litchfield seems to be using Annabelle to live out her own lost dream of being a singer. Have you known parents like this—men or women—who live vicariously through their children and seem to take their successes or failures too personally? Do you think that’s good for either parent or child?
10. Paula Vreeland feels she’s losing her touch as an artist and is frustrated that her current works don’t measure up. Are there things you once loved doing that as you age you no longer do as well? Did you give them up in frustration or find a new way to enjoy them?